Romania in 2004

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Romania’s ruling Social Democratic Party (PSD) suffered unexpected heavy losses in local elections held on June 6 and 20, 2004. The winner by a narrow margin was the Truth and Justice Alliance, a centrist formation that appealed mainly to urban voters. Romania’s entry into NATO in April and four years of improving economic indicators had little impact on social conditions. Most Romanians, including the professional middle class, survived on low incomes. Public corruption was endemic, and the average citizen spent about 10% of earnings on bribes.

The rhetorically left-wing PSD doubled as the party of the economic elite; about 300 people with close ties to the PSD controlled approximately one-quarter of GDP. In August the PSD nominated Prime Minister Adrian Nastase as its candidate for the November 28 presidential elections. The PSD’s chief support base was found in rural and small-town communities in southern and eastern Romania, where the PSD (like the Communist Party before it) controlled nearly all the levers of local power.

Nastase received a boost in October when the European Union decided that Romania had acquired a functioning market economy, which paved the way for the completion of negotiations for EU entry. In November, however, the government was shaken by the revelation that the debts of the partly privatized oil industry, with a valuation of €400 million (about $520 million), had been covered up by the state since 2001. On November 24–25 Nastase suffered a reverse with the publication of transcripts of PSD meetings at which top officials had discussed how to suppress corruption charges against party notables by interfering in the justice system and how to utilize the state machinery to ensure the PSD’s electoral victory.

In the November 28 election, the Alliance nearly doubled its percentage of the vote for the Chamber of Deputies to 31.3%, while the PSD and a small ally obtained 36.6% of the vote. Weaknesses in the electoral law, however, allowed widespread multiple voting on supplementary lists that catered to voters away from their home district on election day. Since no candidate had obtained an absolute majority, presidential elections went to a second round on December 12. The winner by the narrowest of margins was the Alliance’s Traian Basescu, the mayor of Bucharest and a former sea captain.

Before taking office on December 20, Basescu said that defeating corruption would be the focus of his national security strategy. On December 16 Pres. Ion Iliescu had announced an amnesty for rapists, human traffickers, and individuals found guilty of repression in the 1989 revolution, which had brought about the collapse of communism. On December 17, however, he revoked the amnesty in the face of popular fury over the inclusion of Miron Cozma, who in 1999 had been sentenced to 18 years in prison for leading several attacks on public offices in the capital. Calin Popescu-Tariceanu of the Alliance was asked to form a government on December 21, and the new cabinet was approved by the parliament on December 28 and sworn in the following day. Top priorities included modernizing the country and reducing poverty.